


Near The Island

by MissEllaVation



Category: U2
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-15
Updated: 2017-09-15
Packaged: 2018-12-30 00:18:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,218
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12096564
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MissEllaVation/pseuds/MissEllaVation
Summary: After a New York-area gig, Bono watches Edge sleep, and has many meandering thoughts. After a while, Edge wakes up.





	Near The Island

**Author's Note:**

> I have given up trying to neatly encapsulate what I write. Everything I write is a little strange. So I don’t really know what this is. It all began nicely enough, when I woke up one morning hearing Bono’s voice detailing the particulars of Edge’s sleeping form. I mean, it was kind of a waking dream—Bono wasn’t actually there. (Sad.) Anyway, it was lovely, but not enough to hang a story upon. So I cogitated and conjectured, and typed some stuff. And that’s when it got weird. 
> 
> We’re still in my ZooTV era timeline. The tour has begun; the guys are in America. In fact, they have just played a [gig at Nassau Coliseum](http://www.u2gigs.com/show146.html), former home of the Islanders hockey team, and a visual blight for anyone cruising Hempstead Turnpike. Bono probably didn’t mind playing there in 1987, but by 1992, let’s pretend he’s a little more jaded. Wants to get back to New York City right away. ‘Cause when things get too straight, he can’t bear it, and he feels stuck on a pin (to quote Bono quoting Iggy Pop.) I think I just like playing with B's voice. Who needs plot? Who needs structure? Not us.
> 
> “Near The Island” is an Achtung Baby instrumental track. 
> 
> Think kindly of me. I will not hold it against anyone if they give up on this halfway through. But thank you for even trying!

~~**9 March** ~~ **10 March 1992**

****

****

**4:00 a.m.**

I crept into the room as quietly as I could on my drunken paws, and I removed my clothes with what I’m sure was great stealth. I then wrapped myself in a super-deluxe white hotel robe—soft enough to swaddle a giant infant like me—and sat myself in an armchair facing the bed. 

Now it’s four o’clock in the morning, and I’m watching you sleep. 

You’re lying on your back in the super-deluxe white hotel bed, and your skin glows in the ambient city light that the drapes don’t quite shut out. Your breathing is slow and even. Looks like you kicked the covers away earlier in the night. Your left hand rests lightly on the center of your chest; your right hand is curled beside your hip. One leg is fully exposed to the night air. Your pointed knee, your slim foot, are turned outward at an angle. Your other leg is covered modestly by a sheet, along with certain more personal bits of you—bits with which I am lucky enough to be well acquainted. 

And I know that each of the four archangels must have a face just like yours, beautifully wrought by the hands of a loving god.

I want nothing more than to lie down next to you, to kiss your lips, to curl up against your side like a weary child (or a giant infant) and sleep for a few hours. But I would hate myself if I woke you. 

The other thing I want is a cigarette, but I won’t have one. Noisy habit. The crinkling plastic. The clicking lighter, or the _schwupp_ of a struck match.

So I’m just sort of staring at your hand. Your extraordinary, your divine, your gifted left hand. And I can’t help but think about the way you gather my hair from the nape of my neck when you fuck me. Or when I go down on you, lost in your scent, your taste. My hair inevitably slips from your hand, and you gather it back up, and you whisper my name. You don’t like to make a lot of noise. You like to be in control of yourself. But I hear everything.

I’m sorry, Edge. I’m sorry I couldn’t keep still, I’m sorry we didn’t come straight here after the show. I’m sorry I didn’t follow when you left the bar without me. I’m sorry I can’t simply belong to you the way I could if we were a pair of school teachers or stone masons.

However. _In vino veritas_ , as they say. I’m drunk, and this is the truth: I’m afraid it’s quite possible that I love you more than I love anyone else in my life. 

Alright, _differently._ I love you differently. You’re the moon that I sing about every night. The one that eclipses the sun. You’re the satellite that’s gone up to the skies. Silvery cool, constant, faithful in your orbit.

Oh, listen to that sigh. As if you can hear my thoughts. More of Bono’s old blarney. You roll onto your side, and of course the sheet must now slip away from your cock. 

You. You are _so_. You are _just so_. You are just so _everything_.

So why did I let myself miss out on you tonight? For what? It must have been for something really, really good.

Well, no. I’m afraid not. I’m afraid it wasn’t. 

Maybe I’m just afraid.

*

Here we are in America once more, only we’re a little less enchanted with it this time. Aren’t we? We’ve lost some innocence, haven’t we? But then, we had to. Didn’t we? 

I knew we had been driven down this road before, but I think my eyes were different back then. I mean that five years ago, I could look at this road—this turnpike, this interminable thing that runs between blocks of rich lawns and weedy slums, with nothing but little green signs to let you know you’ve passed from one town into the next—and find some charm in it, some exotica. But not today.

There are no formal borders, no Northside or Southside. You just live within demarcations of little green signs. In a brick mansion in Garden City, or an asbestos box in Hempstead. One block apart. You can see The Other right across the street. And everyone behaves like this is normal and acceptable. Big House and slave quarters, in New York no less.

And all I could see, all the way out to the Coliseum, was that it just went. On and on. Past the shabby office building where the friendly “modern rock” radio station lives, past that university whose dorms look just like the Seven Towers. Gave me quite a turn. And beyond that, convenience stores and fast food, carparks, grassy median strips where no real grass grows. 

I’ve read that all of this—this flattened spine running down the middle of Long Island—was once a prairie, covered with grasses, just like the prairies in the midwest. No hills at all, nothing to give shape to the emptiness.

I felt suffocated in the limo, stopping short at every light, under that long cement-colored sky. I can say this _only_ to you, The Edge, so don’t tell on me, okay? But sometimes, in some places, America is really a dump.

It was hot inside the Coliseum. Makes you wonder how they hold hockey games in there. Doesn’t the ice melt from all that body heat? And yet there I was, rolling around the stage in my patent leather. In the armor of this sleazy character I invoke each night. I’m not complaining about him; I like him, whoever he is. But I’m usually impervious to the heat. Or _he_ is, anyway. Flies _like_ the heat. Heat, and sweet sticky business. Sugar. Honey. 

Love.

I don’t know, The Edge. I just felt strange all day, and all night too. Like I wanted to get out of my skin.

Yet I don’t think anyone noticed. The show was good, wasn’t it? We pulled it off. The music always lifts me into the stratosphere. So do the fans, bless ‘em. Of course I kept looking to you for balance and ballast. And you, you sexy motherfucker, all you did was throw your head back and do a little bump-and-grind against your Strat. I’m not complaining about that. The girls were shrieking. Some of the boys were shrieking. Maybe I should wake you up and hand you your Strat right now. Just strap it right on you. Strap that Strat over your naked glory and let you take me back up to the Strat O’Sphere.

More blarney. I’m a silly man, The Edge.

I was relieved when it was all over and we were being driven back to the city. New York is squalid, but at least it _knows_ how squalid it is. It’s not just stumbling around unawares. It’s sleek. All surface. Steel and glass. The lights are always on, and there’s always someone up and ready to play. What a thrill to come out of the Midtown Tunnel and see all those lights swaying in the sky, even after all this time.

The limo couldn’t go fast enough to suit me. You and I in one car, the smoked glass partition raised. You kept your arm around me and gave me dozens of small, gentle kisses, on my hair, on my cheek. Like you knew something was up, but you didn’t let on.

You, Edge. You are. You are the _best_ thing. 

But then I had to decide whether I wanted to just crawl into you and hide for the rest of the night, or else get completely free of anything that might keep me tethered to the earth. I’m afraid I chose the second option. I just had to shake off that straitjacket of an island. I swear it must stretch all the way to the north pole.

So there we were at ______, the four of us, then the three of us, then just two of us, and various and assorted others. And thank you again, love, for being so agreeable, and for staying there with me for a while.

“Philadelphia tomorrow,” you reminded me. “Bright and early.”

“How could I forget The City of Brotherly Love?” said I. Clever me. Sitting at the head of the Most Important Table in the Room, with all sorts of women falling into my lap. 

Oh Edge, those New York City women. No, but have you ever really looked at them? Even the most ordinary ones are incredible. They have that attitude, those I-don’t-give-a-shit clothes in all the darkest colors. They have that powerful stride, like they’re busting hip-first through a series of brick walls, even if they’re just on their way to answer the phone in some little office. 

But then! They turn the corner and come face to face with the aspiring models, those mantis-faced beasties on stilt-legs, carrying folders of head-shots through the Fashion District. And you just see them crumble—the human women, I mean, facing down their alien replacements. Or staring up at them, to be precise. And you can see it in the women’s eyes, that they’re suddenly remembering every time they took an extra helping of dessert, and they’re feeling every spot on their bodies where their clothing pinches or rubs. They suddenly know that they’re not enough, or else too much.

I am those women, The Edge. I mean, I’m this stocky, hairy little man with a big nose—a dime a dozen in New York, by the way—projecting this big, shiny rock star image out at the world, busting hip-first through a series of brick walls, shattering plate glass windows, outrunning avalanches and fireballs. All in me patent leather trews!

And the problem is that I have to _believe_ I’m that guy, or else no one else will believe it. Do you see?

So I had to stay there, in that bar, until I’d convinced someone that I was the World’s Desire. I had to convince them that they really wanted me, and that they could even _have_ me. And then of course I jumped up and said, “See ya ‘round. Married man, y’know. Honorable as the day is long.”

My usual. Someone’s gonna kill me someday. Some woman is gonna bash me over the head with her stiletto pump. But I did feel better, so much better, as if whatever had got under my skin out there in…Hempstead? Uniondale? ( _Uniondale_ , for chrissakes) had worn itself out and gone to sleep.

*

**4:17 am.**

Oh look, your eyes are open. You’re awake. You see me; you smile. Oh, beautiful Edge. How you stretch your incandescent limbs. I wonder if it’s possible to kiss the entire surface of a human body without missing a millimeter. I want to try. I want to.

“I was dreaming,” you say, “when I wrote this. No, I mean, I was dreaming that I was asleep on the beach. Can you actually dream that you’re asleep? And then a seal swam up out of the water to watch me.”

You almost never talk about your dreams. This is precious. I say not a word.

“And the seal shed its skin, all except for the black fur on its head. And it became a beautiful black-haired woman, with sea-blue eyes.” You’re fully awake now, giving me a beatific smile. “Actually, I don’t think it was a woman at all.” 

“You have an affinity for mythical sea creatures lately, The Edge.”

“Yes, because I’ve decided you are one.” (Yawn.) “A siren, disguised as a seal in your patent leather suits.” (Bigger yawn.) “You’re out of your element here on the tenth floor. Should be frolicking in the waves at Sandymount.”

“Not angry with me then?”

“No. Never. Well, sometimes. But not now.” Patting the bed. “Come here.”

I will. But not yet. “Edge, did you notice what happened today at breakfast?”

“Breakfast was quite a long time ago, sweetheart.” 

“It was. Well then, here’s what happened. Larry and I were there, early, waiting for you and Adam. Drinking coffee.”

“Right.”

“And you walked into the restaurant. Did a little dramatic pause in the doorway, very cute. Then you saw me. And your face was…and I guess my face was…also.”

“Bono, your gift of gab seems to be deserting you.”

“But you know what I’m trying to say. Larry saw us glowing at each other like a pair of hundred-watt bulbs, and he looked over at you, and he looked back at me, and he put his hand over his eyes and sank down in his chair and mumbled something like, ‘Oh Christ, I knew it.’” 

“Oh. Yes. I saw that, but I didn’t hear him. I did wonder. Hoped he was just yawning or something.”

“Well, you pulled your face together quickly, Edge. God bless your amazing deadpan. We ought to put you in a video, a video in which you fail to respond to a series of ever-more-intense stimuli—”

“Bono.”

“Right. So when Larry pulled his hands away from his face, I tried to look innocent. Like i hadn’t heard anything, or seen anything. I lit a cigarette. I sipped my coffee. I stared out the window. But I think it was too late.”

“Did he say anything else?”

“Well, no. Of course not. And you know what happened next. Breakfast, shop-talk, everything back to normal.”

You drum your long, fine fingers on the sheet. “Look, it’s okay if he knows.” (Laugh). “I think Adam has known all along anyway. They love us. We love them. Everything will be all right. Really.”

“Edge.”

“Sweetheart.”

“One day soon you’re gonna call me that right in front of them. Do you realize this is the polar opposite of that conversation we had at four a.m. in Berlin? You remember that.”

“Oh love. Of course I do. I was terrified.”

“And now it’s me who’s really…” 

Afraid. Afraid of how much I love you. Afraid it won’t last. Afraid everything we’ve built will implode, collapse. Afraid for Ali, for my girls. For you. For me. Mostly for me, because I’m terrible. I’m afraid I’d be willing to let it all happen, to let everything go absolutely to hell—myself included—for you.

“Bono. Come to bed. You look so tired, sweetheart.”

“We have to be up in about three hours for the City of Brotherly Love.”

“I know. But come here to me anyway. Come on.”

Your smile. I’ve been on the receiving end of it for sixteen years. Exactly half my life—good God. At what point did that smile gain the power to melt me down to my essential elements? Longer ago than I’d care to admit. 

“Sexy bunny,” I murmur.

“What was that?”

“Nothing.”

I rise from the chair and do a little shimmy, and let the big white robe slide from my shoulders, first one, then the other. Slowly, slowly. Ever the showman. I watch your eyes skim my body, then turn dark, almost fierce. 

“Bono. Come over here. Now. Please.”

I slip into the bed, and you take me in your arms. The warm shock of skin on skin, always new. My drug of choice, better than anything else I’ve tried.

“Kiss me, Edge.”

You kiss me. I kiss you. We kiss for ages, like we’ve only just met, like the end of a first date when everything has gone just right. You were asleep for hours, yet I fancy you taste of nectar and ambrosia. How do you do that? You twist my hair around your fingers. Pull almost hard enough to hurt. But not quite. I'm about to take my revenge on your little braid, but then I feel your teeth in the skin between my neck and shoulder. Alright, do what you like with me, love. Anything.

“Bono.”

“Edge.”

“Look, when I said I wasn’t angry that you didn’t come back here with me…I wasn’t being completely honest. I was unhappy. I was jealous.” Your hand on my cheek, your thumb, your fingers stroking. “I wish I were enough for you.”

“But you are enough. In fact, I think you’re more than I can handle.”

“That’s nonsense.”

“It isn’t.”

“Is.”

“Isn’t. Oh stop that. I feel—I feel—”

“You _do_ feel. You feel like fucking heaven, is how you feel.”

“Listen you great eejit, _you_ were the one being serious there for two seconds. And I’m trying to answer you.”

“I know. I’m sorry. I do understand. I understand that you have to visit Nighttown now and then.”

“Please. This is not the time for Irish literary references.”

“Sorry. I mean, I understand that you just have to get everything out of your system sometimes. All that fawning, all that attention from the audience.” Wicked little smile. “How could that possibly be enough? You need more.”

“Ah, you do understand. It is _very_ difficult being me, The Edge.”

“Mm. It’s _hard_ , I know. I can feel how hard it is…”

“You are a very naughty _lapin._ ” 

“So, did you get lucky?”

“I believe I’m getting lucky right now.”

“No, I mean—”

“Edge, my love. No. I wouldn’t go through with it. Did you really think I—?”

“No. I guess not. Of course not.”

“You're so beautiful, Edge." And you're breaking my heart with your sad evergreen eyes. "Kiss me again.”

“Yes. Always, Bono. I’m always. Kissing you. I’ll bet you didn’t know. Even when you’re in the next room. Or out at a bar. Or on the other side of the world. I will. Always. Be kissing. You.”

“I do know. I feel it. I felt it tonight. You brought me home.”

"Little angel."

Sometimes I think this is better than fucking. This sleepy, almost lazy face-to-face, forehead-to-forehead, eye-to-eye. I can’t begin to explain how you move me, Edge. Your almond-eyed beauty. Your boy-slim body I’ve been watching all these years, with a man’s pelt of hair now, both vulnerable and tough. After this I’ll rest my head here, right here, over your heart, or over your belly, and I’ll feel like nothing can hurt me. 

After this. But not yet.

Your intelligent, exquisite fingers. My fingers, clumsy but honest. Murmuring monosyllables, saying anything at all until we can’t say a word. Only our mingled breath, faster and faster. Yes. Oh come for me, love. Oh. You beautiful, you dear, you precious. You very best friend. You lover. You angel.

No one knows me like you do. 

No one could. Ever. Make me feel. God. Oh Edge. 

And that silly pet name of yours. Out in a rush of breath. _“Sweetheart.”_

“Love.” Let me hide myself in thee.

“Are you mine?”

“Yes Edge. Yours.”

“Good. Stay that way.” 

“I plan to.”

“We’ve got just about an hour to sleep now, poor baby. Sorry. But go ahead, I'll watch the time.”

And just like that, I feel sleep coming—for lack of a better phrase—like a drug. In whatever country this is.

“We’re gonna make it through this damned tour, aren’t we Edge?”

“We are, of course. No matter what happens. I’ve got you. You know that, right?”

I do.


End file.
